r/BrowserWar • u/Fluffy_Fuel7649 • 1d ago
I got tired of Chrome eating my RAM and browsers sending my data to cloud AI, so I built an open-source browser with on-device WebGPU AI and tab hibernation: Nova Browser.
Hey everyone,
Like many of you, I loved Arc's UX ideas but hated two things:
How Chrome and modern Chromium forks aggressively hog 4GB+ of RAM for 20 tabs.
How new "AI browsers" send every page you read and every search prompt to remote cloud servers with paid subscriptions.
So I spent the last few months building **Nova Browser**βa sovereign, privacy-first desktop web browser built from the ground up to run multi-model AI locally on your GPU while keeping memory usage under 450 MB.
### Key Highlights:
- **100% On-Device WebGPU AI:** Runs local LLMs (Llama 3.2, Phi-3.5 Vision, Qwen 2.5) directly on your device. Zero external cloud API calls, zero telemetry, works completely offline once cached.
- **Smart DOM Hibernation Engine:** Background tabs automatically unmount dormant DOM structures from memory. In our benchmarks, 50 open tabs sit at ~420 MB RAM instead of Chrome's 2.5 GB+.
- **Zero-Latency Network Ad-Blocker:** Built with memory-mapped Rust rules that filter trackers at the network layer before DOM execution.
- **Built-in Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server:** Allows local AI coding agents and tools to interact with your browsing session securely.
- **Workspaces & Split Views:** Clean workspaces, horizontal/vertical tab layouts, and zero bloat.
- **100% MIT Licensed:** No paywalls, no crypto nonsense, no trackers.
### Tech Stack:
- Frontend/UI: React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Framer Motion
- Core & IPC: Electron, Node.js runtime, Rust native filter bridge
- Local AI Engine: WebLLM, WebGPU TVM runtime
The repository, pre-built macOS/Windows binaries, and benchmark reports are available on GitHub. I would love to get your feedback, bug reports, and feature suggestions!
GitHub: https://github.com/unitybtw/nova-browser
Website: https://nova-browser.vercel.app/
